Sunday, September 10, 2017

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on April 4, 2015:

The resort where we stayed in Cancun had a fancy Italian restaurant where we ate most nights. After a long day of reading books and doing nothing on the beach, we'd all head up to our rooms, shower and meet back downstairs for a delicious meal and drinks. There were eleven of us, and so we had to be split up at two tables.

We wore our best dresses and drank wine and were very, very fancy.

Look how fancy!

After dinner the first night, I stood up to go and chat with the other table. We discussed what they ate and how good it was. An older man who worked at the restaurant came up to me and grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the table where I was sitting, to the spot where I was eating. He seemed very agitated when he said to me, "PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR GUM UNDER THE TABLE CLOTH."

The staff were changing out the linens and sure enough, at my spot, under the table cloth was a piece of gum.

YOU GUYS. It was NOT MINE.

We were eating fancy! I would never put my gum under the tablecloth! It was seriously way up underneath, so whoever did it had to pull up three yards of fabric and shove it up under there, on the pad underneath.

I said, "Sir, that's not mine."

He poked it and said, "FRESH."

I poked it.

It was fresh.

But you guys!!! It was NOT. MINE. I repeated myself. "Sir, I am telling you that gum is NOT MINE."

He was so disgusted with me and so finally I just shrugged my shoulders and walked away.

Does this look like somebody who just shoved GUM under her fancy tablecloth?

The story doesn't end here, unfortunately.

The next night, I was nervous to go back there, but I decided to get over myself and just do it. I sat down and out of the corner of my eye I noticed the man. Out of the corner of my other eye, I noticed one of my friends putting her gum on a little plate next to her dinner plate. I didn't have any time to warn her.

Here comes the waiter (not the same man, but he came straight from talking to the man). He handed her a paper napkin and said, "please put your gum in this paper napkin. And anyone else at this table *here he looked STRAIGHT AT ME* needs to put their gum in a paper napkin right now."

ENOUGH!

I threw my cloth napkin down on the table and half stood up to say to that poor innocent waiter, "OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! I DID NOT PUT MY GUM IN THE TABLECLOTH! YOU TELL THAT MAN I DIDN'T DO IT! AND WILL YOU PLEASE ALSO TELL HIM I AM 37 YEARS OLD!!!!!"

He looked really hurt and said, "yes, I will tell him".

And then he came back later to take our order and I said, "I'll have the seared tuna. With extra gum."

And then the poor innocent waiter said, "please. I am on your side."

And then I really felt bad.

But for Pete's sake, can you imagine being accused of a heinous crime? Twice? When you were 100% innocent of it? Now I know how Cameron Todd Willingham felt.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. Enjoy! This story originally appeared on August 20, 2014:

A good friend of mine was recently photographed and subsequently mocked for his choice in hands-free gear-carrying:

The Oscar winner, 44, laughed off his style choice with a big grin during an interview with CSN Houston's Julia Morales. He attended the game with his 6-year-old son Levi, and topped off his retro bag with a white T-shirt, khaki pants, a baseball cap and sunglasses.

"I'm not afraid of the fanny pack. You gotta kinda put it on the side to make it look a little not as nerdy, but still, practicality wins out," the Dallas Buyers Club actor said. "I got so much gear in here that I don't want in my pockets."

You know what, how many times have you been around someone and they're like, 'Aw, man, I forgot so and so and I gotta go back to my car.'" Pretending to take something out of his hip pouch, he added: "I got mine right here."

I couldn't agree more, Pal. That is SO TRUE.

And I do want to go on record and state that it was me who very probably single-free-handedly started this trend:

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

My mom is in hospice, and so I have spent most of this summer at my parents' place up in Roosevelt MN. My company has been wonderful - they're allowing me to work remotely so that I can be with her. I brought my home office computer and two monitors and set them up in my old loft bedroom. I love it! I wear my overalls every day (and to bed) and work work work and sometimes I go down the ladder and vacuum, or do laundry, or get pills or make meals and it's been working really well.

Today I was on the phone with an
insurance agent following up on a binder that I had ordered. My mom was downstairs with
HER NURSE, talking about vitals and pain management and this weird pain in her head and could that be another tumor?

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

I read this article a few years back about a "secret" Minnesota-shaped forest and have been fascinated by it ever since, mostly because it is located

near very-north Williams, Minnesota, a few miles from my parents’ house. I was also skeptical that it was still around, even though you can totally see it on Google earth.

I thought about driving to it, but knew I wouldn't really be able to see it from the ground. But - it was still on my list of things "to do".

Fast forward to today – I flew up to see my Mom and Dad -- and I asked
the pilot if there’s any chance that I could see this supposed forest out the plane
window? And he told me, “yah, we fly over that all the time!” So I totally stayed awake (impossible) and stared at the ground for one hour and fifteen minutes, desperate to spot it.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

The neighbor brought over a gallon jug of Lipton diet green tea citrus a while back because she knows my dad loves iced tea.

He's been drinking it for several days. He's also been complaining about a funny taste, which I attributed to it being a different brand than he normally buys - also green tea tastes different than black tea. Whatever. I ignore most of what my dad says.

Today on his one millionth complaint about the taste, my mom suggested that maybe it's expired? I figured it was worth checking into, who knows how long neighbors keep their jugs of tea before realizing they're not going to drink them and then decide to generously give them away?

...And that is the story of the first time a Hexum wasted food by dumping perfectly good diet green tea citrus down the drain.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

My mom and Cheryl have five brothers and so anytime they went fishing with their dad there were boys around. And Grandpa Dick is a boy too. So one time Cheryl had to go pee and she refused to use the bucket to pee in and made her dad take her to shore.

"Everybody REEL IN, CHERYL has to go to the BATHROOM!!"

And that's our family quote for anytime you inconvenience others for your convenience.

But that's not the point of my story.

The point of my story is that I went fishing with my dad and two of his friends the other night and I should have peed before we left the dock because I already had to go. But I didn't. So I suffered and fished for like three hours. Finally I realized I was going to have to pee in the boat and ask three men not to look.

But! We were in my dad's friend's boat! And I didn't even see it but there was a cabin under the deck! With a door that shuts! He let me go in there and pee into his little blue plastic fish rinsing bucket!

And you know how when you have to pee really really bad and so you pee for like 67 seconds and that 67 seconds feels like an eternity? It was one of those. I thought I was going to overflow the bucket - seriously.

But I didn't. And then I took the walk of shame out of the cabin with my bucket of pee and very carefully and quickly dumped it over the edge and rinsed rinsed rinsed it a million times. I threw the bucket on the floor and resumed fishing.

...and nobody had to reel in.

But I had this to taunt me the rest of the night. The beating of the tell tale pee bucket.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

I feel like the universe really wants me in a romper. They're everywhere. I gotta say, though, I was worried that the idea of it would be so much better than the reality. I'm 39 years old, and I'm not sure they're 'age appropriate'. I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and get one from ASOS. Out of my comfort zone? Am I crazy?! This thing is the most comfortable thing I have placed on my body in a really long time. And, it's cute! I texted the photo below to my boss with the caption: "I HOPE YOU LIKE ROMPERS BECAUSE I WILL BE WEARING THIS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 30TH."

I call it my 2017 Summer Romper

Versatile!

On a recent trip to my parents' place, there wasn't much to decide in the way of packing:

But that's not the point of my story. The point is that when you go to your parents and basically spend the entire day Saturday and Sunday drinking alcohol (mostly to forget your mom has cancer AGAIN but really just because that's what you do every Saturday and Sunday) and you have all those bathroom breaks --- a romper becomes a somewhat complicated apparatus. I got it down though. I left the straps tied and just shimmied my arms up and out of it to go pee 8.6 million times per day.

It was at 4am, though, when Rowdy woke me up to be let out of the house that I sleepily untied my romper (YES I SLEEP IN IT TOO) and used the toilet. When I went to retie it, the strap in the back was WET.

It FELL IN THE TOILET. Determined not to let the romper-toilet-strap incident get me down, I rinsed it, did my best to get the bar soap involved, tied it up and went back to sleep.

Later that morning, I needed to use the toilet urgently, but my dad was in there (13 people, one bathroom) and so I was forced to use the outhouse, except for the fact that I hadn't yet gotten to item number clean out the outhouse on my chores list. I opened the door, frantic, only to find 432 spider webs and the world's most giant spider covering the outhouse seat hole. I swiped it with some toilet paper but had no time to clean it properly and so I disrompered and did my thing, naked and standing up.

Of course I hadn't shut the outhouse door, one because it was too spidery in there and two because I never shut a bathroom door. I looked up at some point to see both my sister Kasey and my Mom waving to me from the kitchen window.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Did you/have you noticed in previous posts that I have absolutely no eyebrows of my own? It's OK -- I just draw them in with a pencil.

But that's irritating and almost free, so why not spend $600 on a semi-permanent solution that will fade in about 2-3 years?

I'm talking about microblading. It's like a tattoo, but less permanent. AND I LOVE IT.

Don't ever let anybody tell you it doesn't hurt. Because it really hurts bad. And it takes two hours. Twice. So just prepare yourself for that fact and never mind anybody else's opinion on the subject.

Also for about a week you're going to look like two chocolate-y brown caterpillars crawled on your face and died. But that fades and they look amazing again after you pick all the scabs off.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Well, it's back again. The lung cancer, I mean. That lump in her leg turned out to be lung cancer as we know, but it never really went away and plus she had been having major pain in her chest so she went in for her three-month checkup and they took a scan. Lung cancer. In lots of spots.

That's the bad news.

The good news is we have been hanging out a TON lately. I'm typing this up from my old loft bedroom in tiny Roosevelt MN with a vodka squirt in my hand.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Kelly's Yorkie Sylvia is 832 years old. She has zero teeth and it's sort of my fault. You see, Sylvia's breath stunk so bad that I refused to hold her or pet her or babysit her and then finally Kelly took her to the vet and every single one of her teeth was rotted out of her head and so they pulled them. I'm not suggesting it was 100% my doing, but I definitely was a huge hag about it. Kelly was probably sick of hearing me crab.

Anyway, now Sylvia has a stuck out tongue all the time. There's no teeth to hold them in.

She pees everywhere and she loves to ride in my pocket on a bike ride.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

I work out at a fancy schmancy Pilates Studio multiple times a week sometimes. I change in the bathroom from my work clothes into my expensive Lulu Lemon/Athleta outfits Target sale rack stained with bacon grease outfits.

I am also late every single time, so I'm always in a rush and running to the bathroom, changing while I pee (I have this down to a science. I can do my bra and top during the pee and also change my pants and socks).

Anyway, I have in the past forgotten myself and started unbuttoning my top in the lockers area, which wouldn't normally be a problem except there are occasional men who work out there and also the front desk person is a man and although they aren't always in the lockers area, they could totally go there, because it's not a WOMEN'S ONLY kind of thing.

The other day I came sailing out of the women's bathroom to find a tall skinny model of a woman (the only people who work out at my Pilates studio by the way) standing in the lockers area with her button-down shirt open and her bra totally visible for the world to see.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! DID YOU FORGET YOURSELF AND START CHANGING OUT HERE INSTEAD OF IN THE BATHROOM??!?!

"No", she said in her perfect European accent. "This is just a shirt", she said, flapping her real shirt open and shut to reveal her bra, which I was accidentally staring at because she was calling it a 'shirt' but it was totally a bra.

"OH HAHAHA I JUST MEAN THAT, YOU KNOW, BECAUSE DUDES COULD COME BACK HERE, I'VE DONE THAT BEFORE AND I THOUGHT HAHAHA THAT YOU...ACCIDENTALLY...HAHAHA..."

"No," she said again in her perfect European accent. "I did it on purpose." and didn't shut her shirt.

The image I found when I google imaged "tall skinny model in locker room"

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

In December during our trip to Hawaii, Zach and I came to the harsh realization that we are basically golfers.

I mean, we golf. We just do.

In Kona, we definitely drove up to the Country Club on several different occasions to find we had just missed closing time, but then when we finally got in we couldn't go because he didn't have a collared shirt so then we bought one at the grocery store and then we definitely bought a couple of buckets of balls and hit them. I got to hit a lot of mine twice! Because they didn't go very far!,

On the way home we drove through Palm Springs where we just couldn't resist the urge to hit the links for an 18-hole Par 3 experience. We are just naturals let me tell you. The scores don't lie -- and mine was the highest and best score you've ever seen!

It makes sense really, because golfing combines everything we love: driving a golf cart and drinking beer. AT THE SAME TIME.

"Collared shirt". Fancy!!

Left-handedly using a right-handed putter.

Zach has it in his blood, I think. His uncle hikes around and hits a golf ball wherever he goes. I think he's going to walk across the US hitting a golf ball -- and has already gone the whole way around the Salton Sea.